Behavior and productivity of cows milked in automated systems before diagnosis of health disorders in early lactation

Abstract

Associations of electronically recorded data were examined before diagnosis of health disorders in early-lactation cows in herds with automated milking systems (AMS). Rumination time, activity, and milk yield data were collected for 8 mo for 605 early-lactation cows in 9 commercial AMS herds. Using multivariable generalized linear regression models controlling for parity and days in milk, data were examined relative to the day of diagnosis for health disorders occurring in absence of, or at least 14 d before, another disorder: mastitis (n = 13), new cases of lameness (n = 45), subclinical ketosis (SCK; n = 113), and purulent vaginal discharge (n = 49). All cases of displaced abomasum (DA; n = 8) occurred in conjunction with other disorders. Deviations from baseline among affected cows were examined, as well as differences compared with a group of healthy cows and an average group of all cows, who were given mock diagnosis days using the mean days in milk at diagnosis for each disorder. On 6 to 14 d of the 2 wk before diagnosis, cows with DA or mastitis had lower milk yield, rumination time, milking frequency, activity, and milk temperature compared with healthy cows as well as deviations from their own baseline rumination time and milk data starting 4 to 12 d before diagnosis. Cows with DA had lower AMS supplement intake than healthy cows and deviations from their baseline activity and milk temperature starting 6 and 4 d before diagnosis, respectively. Cows with mastitis had greater milk conductivity than healthy cows and deviated from their baseline milking frequency and conductivity 8 and 12 d before diagnosis, respectively. Compared with healthy cows, those with SCK or new cases of lameness generally had lower milk yield, rumination time, milk temperature, supplement intake, and milking and refusal frequencies. Only the milk temperature of lame cows deviated from baseline. Thus, acute health disorders (i.e., DA and mastitis) were associated with deviations from those cows' baseline AMS data, whereas more chronic disorders (i.e., SCK and lameness) were associated with significant but subtle longer term changes in milk production and behavior. Because cows with health disorders deviated from a group of healthy cows before they deviated from their own baseline and from the average of all other cows, including a healthy reference group in health alerts could refine the ability of detection models to identify subtle deviations in early lactation.

Novel Resilience Phenotypes Using Feed Intake Data From a Natural Disease Challenge Model in Wean-to-Finish Pigs

“…Knap (2009) originally used an example of heat stress in pigs to show the potential relevance of day-to-day variability in feed intake. The measures of resilience developed here could also be used to quantify resilience to heat tolerance (Fragomeni et al, 2016; Guy et al, 2017), activity level (Sadler et al, 2011; Gilbert et al, 2017; King et al, 2018), and possibly even reduce stressful interactions for pigs (Rauw et al, 2017a). Heat stress was estimated to cost the US swine industry $299 million per year (St-Pierre et al, 2003).…”

“…These phenotypes did not quantify disease resilience specifically, as it was not possible to validate that all changes in milk yield were related to infectious diseases. This becomes a multifactorial issue as causes for drops in milk yield can include mastitis, lameness, subclinical ketosis, and displaced abomasum, among others (King et al, 2018). This leads to these types of phenotypes capturing disease resilience along with general resilience (Elgersma et al, 2018).…”

Alterations in sick dairy cows’ daily behavioural patterns

“…(2009) [10]Rumination duration↓Steensels et al. (2017) [70], King et al. (2018) [60]MetritisLying duration↑Sepúlveda-Varas et al.…”

Übersicht zu Zusammenhängen zwischen Änderungen der Bewegungsintensität und Ketose bei Milchkühen

“…Eine weitere wichtige Erkenntnis der Studien ist, dass Tiere mit SCK länger anhaltende Veränderungen in ihrem Bewegungsverhal-ten zeigen als Tiere mit akuten Erkrankungen wie akuten Mastitiden [31]. Es sollte berücksichtigt werden, dass eine Änderung der Aktivität nicht auf eine bestimmte Krankheit hindeutet, sondern sehr unspezifisch ist [32] und dass auch weitere Einflüsse die Aktivität der Tiere verändern können.…”

“…der kranken Tiere in Krankenbuchten das Ergebnis dieser Studie beeinflusst haben. Die Kühe, bei denen eine klinische Ketose diagnostiziert wurde, befanden sich durchschnittlich 10 ± 8,2 Tage nach der Kalbung[21].Diese Ergebnisse stehen mit den Resultaten von King et al[31] in Einklang, die 605 Tiere in 9 Betrieben untersuchten. Bereits 8 Tage vor der Diagnose einer SCK nahmen die Kühe weniger Futter auf und hatten weniger Melkungen pro Tag (p < 0,05).…”